My first song

Squeaky voices, wanting to be Michael Stipe, getting punched in the mouth – Graeme Thomson asks Martha Wainwright, Tinchy Stryder and other songwriters for their memories of penning their very first tunes

'I'd keep songs in the closet until it was bursting at the seams' … Juliette Lewis. Photograph: Jamie Mccarthy/WireImage

Neil Hannon: Nobody Wins When Somebody Dies

Sample lyric: "Everyone loses though everyone tries/ Everyone's human, even those we despise."

"From an early age I was humming endlessly in the back of the car. I remember my mum asking me what I was humming and saying, 'I don't know. I made it up.' At 10 I wrote a song called Digital Watch. 'Walking down the street/ Wanna know the time/ Look at my wrist/ I've got a digital watch, a digital watch!' My first proper song was Nobody Wins When Somebody Dies. Like Bono, I hadn't discovered irony yet; I was in Derry listening to Sting and Peter Gabriel. It was post-punky, very average, but it had verses, a chorus, a beginning, an end and a nice A minor, F, C, E chord progression, all of which was a triumph. Everything you write at that age you think is the best song ever written; you have to think that to have any impetus. I was so certain of my own genius I made a compilation tape of all my earliest songs. There are side notes like: 'Used church organ here,' and 'Recorded spring '85.' It's almost unlistenable, but I admire the fact that I took the time. Looking back, it took me six years to write a genuinely good song."

Rumer: Black and Blue

Sample lyric: "You talk about love like it's the enemy."

"I was raised in a hippy Christian family. I used to sing from the hymn book and make up the tunes on a little acoustic guitar, then later I'd sing rambling, mournful poems over minor-key chords. I'd always written fragments, but my first proper, complete song didn't come until my late teens. You know when you're having breakfast how you're always looking for something to read? Most people read the back of the cornflake box, but there was a book of Leonard Cohen's poetry on the kitchen table and I'd read it every day. It must have inspired me. Black and Blue is a hopeful, romantic, youthful song about this old guy who was a bit miserable and cynical about love. I was a waitress, and he found me really annoying because I was so bouncy and happy. I was listening to a lot of Americana – Gillian Welch, Jayhawks. Before that I used to sing Cat Stevens and Tracy Chapman, but I performed Black and Blue with a family friend, and people really liked it. It was so encouraging."

Eliza Doolittle: Mr Mysterious

"At 12 I decided to be a singer, so I thought I'd better start writing songs. I was at school, on my lunch break, and I started writing words to Mr Mysterious and hearing the melody in my head. I made myself sing it 20 times so I wouldn't forget it. It's about a boy who's mysterious and I love everything about him, but there wasn't any real-life experience behind it – I was only 12! I loved Destiny's Child, and I was trying to be cool and sound older than I was. My best friend's brother was a garage producer, so I asked him if he would record my song. I just felt: 'I'm going to do this,' and went for it. My mum made CDs for all my family for Christmas. They all loved it, which gave me a boost in confidence to keep going. I don't think it's half bad – I had spooky beginner's luck. My manager saw potential in that song and signed me, so it definitely helped me out."

John Hiatt: Beth Ann

Sample lyric: "Beth Ann/ Mmmm, she's a woman."

"Beth Ann was real. It was 1963, I was 11, in sixth grade, and she was 11, maybe 12. She'd developed breasts, the first girl in class to do so, and as you can imagine this attracted a great deal of attention. She was my friend's girlfriend, and because I didn't have a girlfriend I wrote about her instead. The song had two chords. I went to a Catholic school where we had youth dances, and I performed it there a couple of times. The next year my friend lost Beth Ann to a high-school football player. We played at the high-school dance, and my friend talked me into playing the version that, instead of referring to her 'two brown eyes', made reference instead to her 'lovely breasts'. I've regretted it ever since. In fact, I immediately regretted it because after the set the footballer came up and punched my lights out. A songwriting lesson well learned: never alter anything."

Tinchy Stryder: Tingz in Boots

Sample lyric: "I slew any crew when I'm in top form."

"I wrote this with my crew Ruff Sqwad when I was about 13. I wrote the hook and a verse in my bedroom, and when I had it I couldn't wait to get it down. My friend had a studio in his room, so I missed a day at school and we went in to do the track. It was a weird feeling hearing it back, a really good vibe. We played it at our youth club and it used to get a mad response. Some DJs we knew played it on pirate radio, and that was a big thing for us. I was much smaller then – it's funny how high-pitched my voice was. I don't perform it now, but I still write the same way. I have to have the right beat. When I have that I just pick up my Biro and my paper and get going."

Martha Wainwright: Question of Etiquette

"I was 16, 17. My brother Rufus had started to write songs, but I was very shy writing or playing around the house. I knew some guitar chords, and I secretly started to compose a song about my father's last child, Lexie, that he'd just had out of wedlock. I'm talking to him – like, I encourage you to do as well as you can with this child! – and also to Lexie, welcoming her, trying to give her a map of this dysfunctional family and telling her that we're glad she's here. I presented it to my mum and Rufus in the living room, and I think they were both impressed. It's actually a pretty well-constructed song, I still play it sometimes. It has a very Loudon Wainwright feel, though it uses my mother's picking style. It felt like a great breakthrough. I quickly went on to write three or four more, and some of them are my best. At that age it's all new – there's a naivety which leaves room for real emotion."

David Ford: 3pm

Sample lyric: "My phone's been off the hook since Tuesday evening/ No one calls and I don't mind."

"The sound of 1994, captured on Encore imitation Stratocaster, Tandy karaoke microphone and Yamaha 4-track. It's about a guy who stays in bed all day and is utterly morose and miserable. It was called 3pm because that's when he gets up. It was a weird lament about a girl who had upset me, and I used to play it constantly to my long-suffering friends. Oddly, I remember the song but I can't remember the girl at all. I was about 16 and there's some very naive, GCSE poetry going on. I definitely had an REM fixation. I wanted to be Michael Stipe and it took about 10 years to get over that. I grew up in Eastbourne, a sheltered environment artistically, and I was very slow to develop musically. I don't think you necessarily have to do bad things before you do good things, but it's like anything: there comes a point learning to play cricket where you start to hit the ball properly. The same is true of writing songs. You start to see where the heartstrings lie and how you can manipulate them."

Juliette Lewis: Shelter Your Needs

Sample lyric: "Give it all, give 'em hell/ It's your birthright."

"I feel I'm making up for lost time because I started a band at 30. Between 20 and 30 I'd write bits and pieces and keep them in the closet until it was bursting at the seams. Some of those early lyrics eventually appeared in songs like I Am My Father's Daughter, but everything was incomplete until I recorded my first EP, Like a Bolt of Lightning. I'd held on for so long that eventually I wrote out of necessity. I spat it all out. Those songs are full of bravado and urgency. Shelter Your Needs is my social commentary song. I was real green, but I'm not embarrassed about it. It's like looking back at yourself in high school. It's the same heart and soul, but the way you express yourself is different."

Fyfe Dangerfield: Lost in Space

Sample lyric: "There was a man called Jimbo the Jet/ When his rocket wouldn't start he began to fret."

"It was always an ambition to write songs. I seem to remember writing Lost in Space when I was eight. It was about a spaceman, um, lost in space, and it wasn't very good. It might seem like it was Bowie-influenced, but it sounded more like Band on the Run, by Wings. It was a bit of a rip-off, I think. It had potential that sadly was never realised, but it was a start."

Isobel Campbell: Is It Wicked Not to Care?

Sample lyric: "I know the truth awaits me/ Still I hesitate because of the fear."

"I wrote terrible songs all the time when I was a kid, rude football chants with my brother which got us clipped around the ear, but I came to proper writing really late. At 18, I started to realise that people like the Pastels and Teenage Fanclub were making music in Glasgow, which made everything seem more possible. I lived at home until I was 23, and I'd stay in when everyone else went out and play the guitar and sing as loud as I could. I studied music at university, and while people were in practice rooms singing Midnight at the Oasis I'd be writing Is It Wicked Not to Care? That was one of my very first songs. I was still a kid when Belle & Sebastian was taking off, and the songs on The Boy With the Arab Strap are among the first I ever wrote."

Lissie: Jungle

Sample lyric: "You're hurting my eyes/ Like a jungle of flies."

"When I was about seven I made up a song called Go Away, directed at my sister. I recorded it on my Fisher-Price tape recorder for 20 minutes and then played it outside her bedroom. At 15 I started singing my poems over the only three guitar chords I knew; they were really wordy and unstructured, endlessly droning about this boy Daniel. The first proper verse-and-chorus song I wrote was called Jungle. I was at high school, listening to everything from Fiona Apple to Dr Dre, and I wrote it about people who smiled to your face then talked about you behind your back. It's sort of a bitter song, quite confrontational! If my friends were over I'd play it to them. It's actually pretty good in terms of the melody, chords and structure, although if I were to sing it now I'd change a lot of the words. Afterwards I thought, 'Wow, that was good!' It helped me move forward and structure my songs better."

Guy Chambers: Skin

Sample lyric: "I know all of you/ In my waking dream."

"My dad was in the London Philharmonic and my early life was classical-orientated. I wrote a string quartet when I was 10, and at 14 I wrote an opera called The Prospect of Whitby that was performed at my school. It was about a sailor going out to sea – Peter Grimes for kids. One of my mates was in it and he still sings bits of it to me now, so I suppose the tunes were quite catchy. I didn't write anything pop-orientated until I was about 19. I was studying classical composition at the Guildhall School of Music, and for light relief I would write pop songs. I lived in a shared house in Islington, 13 Bingham Street. There was a communal room with a piano, and I'd sing Skin to people there. It was quite jazzy, I was really into Billie Holiday and Chet Baker. One of my friends played with Marc Almond, which is how Marc ending up recording it [with Chambers's band Burmoe Brothers]. It was reviewed in NME! It wasn't a hit, but it was the first step. I don't remember anything before that being worth anything. As a professional songwriter, to me a song without a performance doesn't really exist."